Simple Soap

I just wanted to show off my latest batch of homemade soap that I made yesterday.  These are actually shampoo bars, but the difference is in the ingredients, not the method of making them.

This is my first batch of hot-process soap.  It was made in a Crock Pot and only took about 90 minutes, including clean-up.

In the past I've always made cold-process soaps.  There are advantages to each method, but in terms of curing time, hot-process wins hands down.  While still soft, it can be used the day after it is made, as opposed to several weeks of curing time with the cold-process version.

Because it was my first time, I didn't try to take any photos as I made it.  I plan to make another batch this weekend and will try to enlist Shane's help so that I can write a tutorial with pictures.  Stay tuned for that.

Product Review: Our Homemade Shampoo Bars

The lavender bars in the top left and center are our homemade shampoo bars;
the others are our regular bath soap.

There are lots of posts lately about going "no 'poo", the baking soda and apple cider vinegar alternatives to shampoo and conditioner.  I was curious, so I gave "no 'poo" a try.  I was already using our homemade soap to wash my hair, and while I had good results with "no 'poo", I decided it was just simpler for me to carry on with the homemade soap.

As some of you already know, Shane and I have been making homemade bath soap for a couple of years now.  We wouldn't want to go back to commercial made soap, and both felt our soap was working fine as shampoo.  But when I found a "recipe" for a soap bar formulated especially for hair, I wanted to give it a try.

Washing your hair with handcrafted soap is not like using shampoo.  At first, soap may dry your hair, or make it oily, but once your scalp is accustomed to the handcrafted stuff, it normalizes on it's own.  That's when you'll find that you probably don't need to wash your hair as often as you're used to.  Under normal circumstances, I wash my hair about every 5 days now.  I rarely use any conditioner, and when I do, it's nothing more than a diluted vinegar rinse or maybe a dime-sized drop of olive or coconut oil worked through my hair.

You apply the shampoo bar by working it into a lather in your hands first, then working it into your hair.  The problem is, most homemade soap doesn't lather a lot.  The first thing I noticed was that the shampoo bars lather more than our regular bath bars do.  While lather isn't necessary for cleaning, it's what most of us are used to, and I do believe it makes it easier to tell if I've distributed the soap throughout my hair. 

The second thing I noticed was that my hair felt softer when I was rinsing it, similar to the feeling I'd get if I used conditioner.  When I combed my wet hair, it also felt as if I'd used a conditioner.

Now, my hair is what it is.  I learned some time ago not to try to force it to be anything else.  Most days I'd rather let it dry curly than to subject it to the drying heat of the blow dryer or flat iron.  I haven't had a perm for decades, and I quit coloring my hair several year ago because I actually like the natural graying color.  Since then I have decided that I don't want to expose myself to those chemicals, anyway.  

I like my hair in it's natural state, but I'm fully aware it's never going to look like a Pantene ad.  But it's soft and the last few times I've had it cut, the stylists have commented on how healthy it is. The first time I tried the shampoo bar, I let my hair air dry.  It dried in long loose curls, and though still a little frizzy, it wasn't as bad as usual. The next time I tried the shampoo bar, I blow-dried my hair.  It was pretty fluffy right after blow drying.

But by the next day, and the day after that, it had "settled down" a bit and was very soft and smooth (well, as smooth as my hair ever gets). I've found that if I wash my hair on a Monday, it will look best on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Shane and I both like that the shampoo bar isn't heavily scented like many shampoos and conditioners.  We included a few drops of lavender essential oil, which smells nice while we're using the soap, but doesn't linger in our hair afterward. I also like that Kat likes this bar.  She didn't like using our typical homemade soap for her hair.

As for negatives, at this point I can't think of any.

If you're a soap maker and are interested, I used this basic shampoo bar formula from the Crunchy Chicken website. 

If you aren't a soap maker but would like to be, read everything you can get your hands on, then give it try.  Caution should be taken, but it's not nearly as intimidating as it first seems.

Bi-Monthly Book Look - January/February

I thought I'd take a look at the books I read in January and February of this year.  Maybe you'll find something here you like.

I've divided them into non-fiction and fiction.  Beyond that, they are in the order they were read.

Non-Fiction

Making It - Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
My rating: 5 of 5.  This is a great book of formulas, recipes and instructions for making homemade food, drinks, cleaners and useful objects.  I liked this book well enough that I bought a copy for myself.

Fed Up With Lunch - The School Lunch Project - Mrs. Q
My rating: 3 of 5.  A Chicago-land teacher decides to eat her school's hot lunch every day for a year, and lived to tell about it.  While interesting, the book offers little to solve the problem of the declining quality of school lunches.

Made By Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do-It-Yourself - Mark Frauenfelder
My rating: 4 out of 5.  This is one man's account of his decision to delve into the world of "makers".  Not only does he describe his own experiences, but he discusses the philosphies behind what he calls the "DIY Movement" and the value of making mistakes.  It was a fun read and as someone who has always been a do-it-yourselfer  to some extent or another (and who doesn't think of this as a "movement" at all),  it was interesting to see the processes of DIY projects from the point of view of someone who wasn't naturally called to work with his hands.


Fiction

The Heart Specialist - Claire Holden Rothman
My rating: 4 out of 5.  Historical novel about one of Canada's first female physicians.

Gone For Good - Mark Childress
My rating: 3.5 out of 5.  A 1970s rock star finds himself plane-wrecked on a tropical island, where other inhabitants include Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart and other famous dead folks.

11/22/63 - Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5.  What if you could travel back in time and prevent JFK's assassination?  That would be a good thing.  Or would it?

I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive - Steve Earle
My rating: 5 of 5.  Alt-country music fans will recognize Steve Earle as a singer/songwriter; I think he does an impressive job with his first novel.  Imagine being a washed up heroin-junkie physician living with the ghost of Hank Williams.  What would it take to make you go clean?  (Coincidentally, this was the third novel in a row that included JFK among their casts of characters.  What are the chances?)

Weekly Anti-Inflammatory Check-In

As many of you know, I've been following along with Erica at NW Edible Life as she takes on a month of anti-inflammatory dieting.  I've been participating to a small extent.  I know this kind of post isn't for everyone, but I think there is only one or two more update after this, so I hope you'll please bear with me.  Here's my recap for the week. 

I had some setbacks:

• I made lunch for my grown daughter, who follows a vegan diet.  I made whole wheat pasta with cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, oven-dried potatoes and garbanzo beans.  We each added various oils and seasonings, and  I opted for vegetarian rather than vegan by adding three kinds of cheese to mine.  It was really tasty, so I ate the leftovers for supper that night and again for lunch the next day.  All that carby, veggie goodness made it hard for me to stay awake by Saturday afternoon.
• On Sunday, we visited my dad and he served us mostly junk.  Now, of course I had the choice to not eat, and I did avoid some of it, but I would never intentionally hurt the feelings of a host (especially family) who sets out food with love.  So I did the best I could.
• I do, however, claim full responsibility for the second soda I had on the way home from my dad's. 
• I ate a school lunch on Valentine's Day.  You can read about it in my post from Wednesday.
• I don't think I did a single thing toward getting extra exercise this week.

I made some gains as well:

• I reduced the sugar in our big batches of iced tea even more than last week.  We were using 3/4 cup in a gallon of tea, and now we are down to 1/2 cup.  
• I am still using honey, cane juice crystals, molasses, etc. in baking, although I didn't do as much baking this past week. 
• I have rediscovered the wonders of coconut oil.  I knew about the health benefits that come from eating it, but I had never really put coconut oil into heavy rotation in my kitchen.  It is now!  
• Coconut oil is making it's way into our bathroom, too, as a moisturizer, toothpaste, hair conditioner and so on.
• I've been trying to add more veggies to our evening meals.  For supper, we usually have meat, a starch and two veggies (or maybe just one veggie occasionally).  I'm trying to add a third vegetable, or sometimes a piece of fruit, to most of our dinners.
• I'm doing great at eating breakfast.  I don't think I missed a day all week.  I've had either oatmeal, oat bran or an avocado for most of my morning meals, and when it was oats, I stirred in a spoonful of coconut oil.
• We're still drinking kombucha daily, and in fact, I set up a continuous brewing system yesterday.
• We did not go candy crazy on Valentine's Day.  I bought Kat two small candy items and rounded out her gift with a craft kit.  Something to do, rather than something to eat.  :)  I made a batch of just five cupcakes from my Small Batch Baking book, but I used whole wheat flour, coconut oil and cane juice crystals in the cake and real butter in the frosting instead of ingredients that were listed.  BTW, one of those cupcakes still sits in the fridge uneaten.
• We ate salmon twice during the week.  Living in the Midwest, the choices are frozen or canned.  If it is "fresh" (as in, not frozen) in the seafood case, it was probably still frozen during transit.  We ate previously frozen fillets one night and quinoa-salmon patties from canned salmon another.  In both cases, I made sure they were wild, not farmed.  We all like fish, so these dishes were a hit.
• I'm still sticking to my 11:00 p.m. to 6 a.m. sleep schedule.   I find it really makes a positive difference when I stay on a schedule.

As for how I feel, the most noticeable change is that I feel like I have more energy during the day, and that I might be sleeping better at night.  When I didn't eat meat for several meals in a row, I felt a lot more sluggish, then better when I finally did eat some animal protein.

I feel like my skin is clearer and brighter. 

I had a migraine headache, but it was both milder and shorter in duration than most.  While I'd love to attribute that to something dietary, this will have to happen consistently before I chalk it up to anything other than some good luck.

One other thing I've noticed is that I've been comfortably warm.  I have hypothyroidism and I often feel uncomfortably cool.  That condition seem to have improved very recently.

It's just past mid-month.  Plenty of time to do better in the next couple of weeks...I hope.

New Batches of Soap

Clockwise from top left:  Lavender shampoo bars, cinnamon-clove bath bars, tea tree bath bars.

On Sunday, we made three batches of soap.  The first bars we made were shampoo bars.  We used this formula from The Crunchy Chicken as a starting point.  As advised, we used the jojoba and caIstor oils, but we changed the other oils to coconut and olive. (Because we changed oils, we were sure to run the changed formula through a soap calculator to find out the exact amounts of lye and water we needed.)

Shane and I have both been using our homemade soap as shampoo for months, but we wanted to see if this formula really is better for hair.  We wanted to encourage Kat to use it, too, so we scented it with lavender essential oil and a bit of lavender tint.

We also made more bath soap.  With Shane's help or without, I've made about six batches of soap so far, using different oils each time.  This time we decided to go back to our very first formula, because we seem to like it best.  It is made with olive, coconut, rice bran, and peanut oils.  We made a fairly large batch and split it.  We added tea tree oil and a touch of green tint to one half.  To the other half, we mixed in essential clove oil, 1/ teaspoon ground cinnamon and some pink soap tint.  It has a wonderful fragrance and a pretty speckled color.

These soaps will be ready to use in 4-6 weeks.  Meanwhile, we're using the last of two batches that were cedarwood/juniper scented (with some whole juniper berries mixed in) and lavender scented.

Solid Lotion Bars

Last week I discovered a new blog, Common Sense Homesteading, and saw this "recipe" for solid lotion bars.

These are so easy to make.  All you need are equal amounts of beeswax, cocoa butter and the oil of your choice.  I used olive oil.  I used 2 ounces of each (by weight on the beeswax and cocoa butter, and by volume on the oil).

Melt all together...

Pour into molds (I just recycled some yogurt tubs)...

and a couple or three hours later, pop them out.

These are really fun to make and have a nice chocolaty scent when you use them, but the smell doesn't linger and become a distraction.  The emollients soak into your skin quickly so you aren't left with a greasy feeling on your hands or body.  I really like that all the ingredients are natural, and that this one product can be used all over my body, including my lips.

I used olive oil, but I think next time I will try coconut oil instead, in hopes it will yield a slightly firmer bar.  This batch made four bars for me (1.5 ounce each, approximately).  There are only three in the picture, though, because I already gave one to my daughter.